> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://herr-klamm.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The 'Mountain Men' at Terry's - URL: https://herr-klamm.ghost.io/the-mountain-men-at-terrys/ - Published: 2026-08-14T10:19:18.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-14T10:19:18.000Z - Author: Stephen Bender \[This is post-padding a little bit, but they were the most extraordinary people I met on this trip, so I think it's justifiable. I'll try and relate most nuances. What has preceded it – these pitiful posts – leaves so much out and you're seeing perhaps 25% of the import of the thing via photographs, so it's very fragmentary and episodic. Should do at least one thing in some detail.\] I think I conflated the days because I was in Zanesville on two successive occasions. So, about the 'Mountain Men'. They were just locals, but the youngest did have a ten inch beard. Don't remember his name, and as he was a wanted criminal, (child support was one of the things referenced that I recall) that's all to the good. He'd been through fentanyl already, half dozen dead soldier pals from it he mentioned as a yawning aside. Thrown out of all the bars on the far side of the river (that would be downtown, ie the town itself). Polishes off a dozen beers and a 1/5 of Scotch daily to compensate after a day of hard labor. Ok. I'm a boy among men. That much was evident inside of about 5 minutes. Then "the uncles" showed up. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/40/f6/40f67c96-b14d-4bd9-be24-9e5bc4358f0f/content/images/2026/08/IMG_2912.JPG) Now, they were friendlier, I guess, but scarier also? Just because you figured that they'd gotten into more shit. One was a retired fella from the local utility. He'd painted those high tension wire metal things that are like 200 feet tall. Those things. He'd seem men electrocuted. He said the 'new generation' fucks around on their phones up there, and that's why he retired early. With a union pension. Now he sits arount Terry's and belittles his recovering drug addict out-of-control alcoholic nephew for being "the biggest pussy". Or, if you prefer. "He probably can't even fuck a girl anymore with all that "fent" in him. Not that any non-skank would fuck this faggot". Laughs all around. Oh, they half-seriously tried to chat up the waitress. That was met with screwed up eyes and light parrying. Cute girl, if a little pudgy. She took no shit and gave zero fucks. Feign interest, sure. Just get these fucks to leave a decent tip. A lesson? \[Light memories of the "New Princess Market" corner store in the Tenderloin. Homeless black people rolled up around 7AM looking to get their drink on. They'd address the Palestinian immigrant proprietor in no uncertain terms. Bloodsucking Muslim Cocksucker. They got what they came for. The Owner – Wa'il aka "Willy" from Tulkarm on the West Bank – would denounce them in no uncertain terms: the shit you talk shows why you people will always will be a slaves. The N-word was bandied about, even if in abstentia. It would give a liberal an anuyrism: just day to day patter, eliciting laughter all around.\] ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/40/f6/40f67c96-b14d-4bd9-be24-9e5bc4358f0f/content/images/2026/08/IMG_2917.JPG) The other "unc" was a little more circumspect. But not by much. Also gave the 33 year old "kiddo" – "you're doing great, kiddo", they'd mockingly say – a raft of shit, which was taken in stride, of course. He was still working. The "contractor" don'tcha know – never specified what he was building. Probably WMD's. He languidly discuss the finer points of tax evasion. He offered me unsolicited pointers about the "Homestead Exemption" and half a dozen other things ("deduct every fucking thing" was one tip which I shall adopt) I've repressed. We talked about a host of things, none of which I can remember in detail. We talked some history. Local stuff. Deindustrialization. They'd traveled too. One was probably in the military abroad. Well-rounded people from the working class who made it into the middle class. Really just solid people, but the rhetoric was so jarring and the lifestyles so extreme (it wasn't even that, it was the utter matter-of-factness of the thing that was chilling). This I think had to be a somewhat studied thing to achieve, unless Appalachian people also possess a Stoic side which allows all the shit to wash off with a cheery "ah fuck it" devil-may-care mien. I really felt small next to these men, which I can't say I recall happening before. Each of them had this unspoken but loud "don't fuck with me or else" vibe. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/40/f6/40f67c96-b14d-4bd9-be24-9e5bc4358f0f/content/images/2026/08/IMG_2866.JPG) Now this likely overwrought spidey sense may be an artifact of my own affect at the time. I think if I just met the "uncs" it would have been normal and fine. But the clincher was this 6-6 Mountain Man 20-something. A cousin. Comes shambling in. The slothiest motherfucker I've ever seen. In no hurry at all: just fuck it. I assume he was opioded out up his ass and through to his gizzard. Two gulps, Bud bottle down. I've never seen a human being move so purposelessly yet so deliberately. And it didn't seem out of control. It came off as the most chillaxed dude ever. Offing chicken wings gradually. I aspire to go slow and more and more often and I do so nowadays more and more. This guy was the beau ideal of what Bertrand Russell called idleness. And I hardly spoke to this kingpin. There was some suspicion he harbored about me (preppy-looking foreigner?) and I was in awe of him. As if only his antennae could suss out that these doings might be recorded. For posterity. I did rib him by calling him a "Centurion Motherfucker." In defense of my dignity and ability to overcome: every decade or so I encounter a man that bowls me over. Not sexually. I don't like to be touched. By anyone. Kidding! (not really) Just that charismatic majesty of encountering peculiar particular Ganoven. The Krays of Southeastern Ohio might be a reality show idea. So, what I really meant to say was about the Foothills Men, which is what they were, topographically, was this. You can touch up anything with artifice, but this really was a charged experience. In the middle of talking to them, I went down to the dock and smoked 3 cigarettes consecutively just to gather my thoughts. Not that I was frightened, exactly, just that it was a disorienting experience being around such hard living human Americans. Mostly I think of Americans as soft and degenerate. Laundry list of First World complaints: fuck you! But these people were hard and serious. Maybe I've been hanging around the wrong people? I'm used to refined and intellectual types with nice manners and a drinking problem, which amounts to 1/4 of a days work for these guys. They're quaint, these book smart comparative tea tottelers. Every single day, these Foothills Men do it again. Unless. Unless they too were putting on the dog for the foreigner, which is a possibility that can't be excluded. But I doubt it. They are who they are and they don't give a fuck who knows it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/40/f6/40f67c96-b14d-4bd9-be24-9e5bc4358f0f/content/images/2026/08/bertrand-russell.jpg) So, just to wind this down. I made a mistake. I suggested a photograph. The ambiance changed. They gradually made their way to the river and more or less shunned me. I did not blame them. When you encounter gangsters metaphorically, they do not wish to be documented. I would blanche at it myself, were the roles reversed. Sort of like the way the Amish eschew vanity and embrace modesty. As any Mormon girl will tell you: "modest is hottest". It's the God's honest truth. I can think of a handful of San Francisco women who played this to the hilt and I never had the courage to say boo to them. Even in Port Costa. For instance. Now, me being me. I was crestfallen at this turn of events. And the circumstances then were such that I wasn't having it. So, nursing a beer now inside in the air conditioning, recovering from the heat wave by myself and preparing to drive with alacrity, I hatched a plan to one up them. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/40/f6/40f67c96-b14d-4bd9-be24-9e5bc4358f0f/content/images/2026/08/IMG_2904.JPG) They had retired to the back parking lot in furtherance of what I can only imagine were unspeakable acts of depravity. The uncs still got high and did coke. I've seen this happen before, during kickball, when a select group would retire to the bushes for exclusive bad things. That I was not privvy to this I regard as a subtle recognition that I wouldn't partake, which was accurate. So why invite a wet blanket? No point to it, merely a warm recollection and observation. Everyone should mutually respect boundaries. But my feelings were a little hurt, even if it was just. I suggested violating their privacy, a faux pas that I would not repeat in later doings in Southern Illinois. But I wanted to establish that I wasn't someone to be discarded so casually. So I approached them and bade my farewells with a firm German handshake. I also told them a fib, which wasn't exactly fair, but I stormed off with derring-do and they yelled after me encouraging words. I didn't pay my tab either, I later realized. I guess if for no other reason they'll laughingly remember "that Pennsylvania motherfucker who stuck us with his bill". just so u no cvery father is a motherfucker and every son will viciously defend his dear mother for that poem were called the police to take me away to a hospital in handcuffs right out of the house yet again and fed drugs against my will for 2 weeks with a false diagnosis but tapered off now so who gives a flying fuck all i ask is for nothing so dear lord do please save lil me from the 'help' \[book-smart affluent\] \[bourgie-ass professional\] of friends and family If it's not evident. If English isn't a strong suit. That's the answer to the idiotic "poem" question. It's funny when people who can't be bothered to pay much of any attention, take it upon themselves to show their "concern." \\ With state force... \[That was nothing to me. I've been through much worse – that specific thing I'd already done in San Francisco. So it was boring. That said: I don't forgive. And I don't forget. And I will live to a ripe old age decades from now, so don't get any bright ideas with the music choice. Life is boring in part because it is repetitive.\] I'm not to be trifled with.